Two men flogged in Indonesia after being found guilty of gay sex
A Shariah court in Indonesia’s Aceh province sentenced two men to public caning after neighbourhood vigilantes caught them having gay sex in a rented room.
The court found them guilty and sentenced them to 85 and 80 lashes, with the older man receiving a harsher punishment for allegedly facilitating the act.
Dozens of people watched as the men, aged 24 and 18, were publicly caned in Banda Aceh’s Bustanussalatin city park for engaging in gay sex. The punishment, carried out by five enforcers in robes and hoods, involved lashes across their backs with breaks for water and medical treatment after 20 strokes, media reports said.
This was the fourth time Aceh had flogged people for homosexuality since implementing Shariah law in 2006 under a peace deal to end a separatist rebellion.
The two college students were arrested last November after neighbours, suspected them of being gay, broke into their rented room and found them naked and hugging.
An Islamic Shariah court sentenced them to 85 and 80 lashes, but they received 82 and 77 strokes after a remission for time served. One of the men was so weak after the final lash he reportedly had to be carried.
Two other individuals were sentenced to 34 and 8 lashes, respectively, for gambling.
Rights groups condemned the punishments.
The “intimidation, discrimination and abuses” against LGBTQIA+ people in Aceh was “like a bottomless well”, Andreas Harsono, Indonesia researcher at Human Rights Watch was quoted as saying by AFP.
“The Aceh government should learn from these mistakes and review their Islamic criminal code.”
Amnesty International called the punishment a “horrifying act of discrimination” against the men.
“Intimate sexual relations between consenting adults should never be criminalised, and no one should be punished because of their real or perceived sexual orientation,” Amnesty’s deputy regional director Montse Ferrer said.
Additional reporting by agencies.
Summer arrives early and puts India’s staple wheat crop at risk
India is entering an unusually early summer yet again with March expected to be one of the hottest on record, weather officials warn.
Meteorologists say that key wheat-growing regions in central and northern India could see temperatures rise up to 6C above average.
“March is going to be unusually hot this year. Both the maximum and minimum temperatures will remain above normal for most of the month,” a senior official at the India Meteorological Department, who asked not to be identified ahead of the official announcement, told the Reuters news agency.
The soaring temperatures, arriving weeks ahead of schedule, pose a risk to the country’s staple wheat crop, which is already under pressure after three consecutive years of poor yields.
“March is not going to be conducive for wheat, chickpea and rapeseed,” the official said. “Crops could experience heat stress.”
India is the second-largest wheat producer in the world, but consecutive years of extreme heat have seen yields slashed, forcing the country to ban exports of the grain in 2022 to protect domestic supplies, impacting global wheat markets.
Another poor harvest in 2025 could force the government to lower or remove the 40 per cent wheat import tax, making India more reliant on costly imports at a time of volatile global food prices.
Wheat is planted from October to December and needs cool temperatures to grow properly. When temperatures rise too early, wheat grains shrivel and ripen too soon, leading to lower yields.
The impact of weak crops is already being felt with wheat prices hitting record highs this month as domestic supplies dwindle.
The heatwave started unusually early this year, with the western belt of Mumbai, Goa, Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Karnataka experiencing extreme temperatures in February – a month that is typically milder.
On 26 February, Mumbai recorded a temperature of 38.7C, about 5.9C above normal, triggering an early-season heatwave warning. Other coastal regions saw temperatures crossing 37C, reaching or exceeding the threshold for a heatwave declaration.
Heatwaves in India typically occur between March and June, but rising global temperatures are shifting this pattern, making extreme heatwaves arrive earlier and last longer.
Last year, the capital Delhi and neighbouring cities saw summer temperatures reach 50C, and the country reported 40,000 cases of heatstroke.
Weather experts say this year’s early heatwave is linked to an extremely dry winter season, which saw severe rainfall deficits in several states.
Gujarat and Goa didn’t receive any rain at all between January and February, marking a 100 per cent deficit. Maharashtra also saw almost no rain, with a 99 per cent shortfall. Karnataka received 0.9mm of rain instead of the usual 4.6mm, leaving an 80 per cent deficit, while Kerala saw 7.2mm compared to the usual 19.7mm, a 64 per cent deficit.
“It would not be wrong to say that this year the country has been witnessing one of the driest winter seasons,” Mahesh Palawat, vice president of Meteorology and Climate Change at Skymet Weather, said.
“An absence of weather systems has kept rainfall at bay, allowing temperatures to rise unchecked.”
A persistent anticyclone over the central Madhya Pradesh state has been pushing warm easterly winds across the West Coast, delaying the cooling sea breeze and driving up temperatures, Mr Palawat explained.
He added that the climate crisis played a role in altering seasonal cycles.
“It has been established that global warming has affected the winter rainfall in India. Summers have expanded and the winter season has downsized, with erratic rainfall patterns impacting temperature profiles across the country.”
Scientific evidence is increasingly linking India’s worsening heatwaves to the climate crisis.
The Climate Shift Index by Climate Central found that Mumbai’s February temperatures that triggered the heatwave were at least three times more likely due to human-caused climate change. Goa’s temperatures were at least five times more likely due to global warming.
“Anthropogenic climate change is escalating both meteorological and hydrological extremes worldwide, resulting in frequent record-breaking weather events,” said Dr Akshay Deoras, research scientist at the UK’s National Centre for Atmospheric Science and the University of Reading.
“Warmer-than-usual temperatures are being observed across all continents, indicating a relatively uniform global warming pattern. Unless we limit global warming by rapidly cutting greenhouse gas emissions, weather records will continue to break frequently.”
China vows to retaliate after Trump threats of tariff over fentanyl
China said it opposed Donald Trump’s latest threat to impose a punitive extra 10 per cent duty on imports from the Asian country, vowing to take “all necessary countermeasures” to protect its interests.
The US president announced the additional 10 per cent duty on Chinese imports of deadly drugs, including fentanyl, stating that these are still coming into the US from China, Mexico, and Canada.
Accusing the US administration of “shifting the blame” on the fentanyl trade, China’s commerce ministry on Friday said: “China has repeatedly stated that unilateral tariffs violate World Trade Organization rules and undermine the multilateral trading system.”
“China has one of the strictest and most thoroughly enforced anti-drug policies in the world,” the ministry said in a statement, and highlighted the risks new tariffs would bring to global supply chains.
“This time, (the US) once again is threatening additional tariffs. Such behaviour is purely ‘shifting blame and shirking responsibility,’ which is not conducive to solving its own problems,” the statement said.
The reaction from Beijing comes a day after Mr Trump took to his social media platform TruthSocial and said: “Drugs are still pouring into our Country from Mexico and Canada at very high and unacceptable levels.”
“A large percentage” of the drugs were made in China, he went on.
On Thursday, Mr Trump said his proposed 25 per cent tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods will take effect on Tuesday, along with the extra 10 per cent duty on Chinese imports. These fresh tariffs on China are over and above the existing 10 per cent levied on 4 February as Washington and Beijing face escalating tensions over trade wars.
China’s commerce ministry has warned of retaliation if the US did not return to the negotiation table. “If the US insists on proceeding with this course of action, China will take all necessary countermeasures to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests”.
Beijing now has less than a week to publish its countermeasures against the US as the announcement from Mr Trump coincides with the start of China’s annual parliamentary meetings on Wednesday, a set-piece political event where Beijing is expected to unveil its main economic priorities for 2025.
The issue is causing tensions between China and the US as the ingredients in fentanyl are largely produced by companies in China and used by pharmaceutical companies to make legal painkillers. But a portion of those chemicals is purchased by the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels in Mexico.
Volcano owner has conviction quashed over eruption that killed 22
A New Zealand judge has overturned the criminal conviction of the owner of an island volcano where 22 people died in an eruption.
The ruling has absolved the company, Whakaari Management, from paying millions of pounds in restitutions to the families of those who died and the two dozen survivors who were seriously injured.
Forty-seven people were on Whakaari, also known as White Island, when it erupted in December 2019.
Most were passengers from US and Australian cruise ships on a walking tour, along with their local guides.
Two British women, Liz and Heather McGill, were seriously injured in the eruption.
Whakaari Management, run by three brothers who own the active volcano, was initially found guilty in a 2023 trial of breaching New Zealand’s workplace health and safety law by failing to keep visitors safe.
The brothers appealed their convictions in a hearing last October at the High Court in Auckland.
The case centred around whether the company, which granted access to the volcano to tourism operators and scientific groups for a fee, should have been in charge of safety practices on the island under health and safety laws.
The laws state that anyone in charge of a workplace must ensure the management of hazards and the safety of all there, including at entry and exit points.
During the 2023 trial, survivors testified that they had not been told the active volcano was dangerous when they paid to visit it. They also stated that they were not supplied with protective equipment, and many were wearing clothing that made their burns worse.
In Friday’s written ruling, Justice Simon Moore ruled the company did not have a duty under the relevant law to ensure that the walking tour workplace was without risks to health and safety.
He agreed with the company’s lawyers that the firm only granted access to the bare land through permits, and should not have been legally considered an entity that managed or controlled the workplace.
The judge ruled it wasn’t unreasonable for the company to rely on tourism operators, who were licensed under New Zealand law, and emergency management and scientific agencies to assess the risks of activities on the island and manage safety precautions.
The case had far-reaching implications and changed the laws governing New Zealand’s adventure tourism industry, which is often based around outdoor thrills on or around the country’s many natural hazards.
Operators must now take all reasonable steps to inform customers of any serious risks.
The lawyers for the company said during last October’s hearing that if the conviction was allowed to stand, it would make other landowners reluctant to allow such activities to take place on their property for fear of being held responsible for the day-to-day decisions of tourism businesses operating on it.
That suggestion was rejected by the New Zealand’s workplace safety regulator, which brought the charges.
Justice Moore said in Friday’s ruling that a too narrow or broad interpretation of the law governing who controls a workplace could have “profound” consequences.
White Island, the tip of an undersea volcano, was a popular tourist destination before the eruption and was reached by boat or helicopter from the North Island’s Bay of Plenty. When the superheated steam blew in December 2019, it killed some instantly and left others with agonising burns.
The workplace safety regulator brought charges against a number of parties — including the company run by Andrew, Peter and James Buttle.
Six entities pleaded guilty in 2022 and 2023 to the charges they faced, including five tour companies and New Zealand’s geoscience research institute, which monitors active volcanoes.
Charges were dismissed against the Buttle brothers individually, along with two tourism logistics firms and the government emergency management agency.
In March, those convicted were ordered to pay a combined total of just over NZ$10 million (£4.5 million) in restitutions to the bereaved families and survivors. Almost half of that was due to be paid by Whakaari Management Limited.
The company filed its appeal the same month.
In his ruling, Justice Moore said he had not overlooked or minimised the “unquantifiable tragedy” of the episode.
“The 47 people who were on Whakaari at the time it erupted should never have been there,” he wrote. The fact that they were revealed “multiple systemic failures”.
The case, however, was decided on the particular law and facts and boiled down to relatively narrow legal questions, he added.
Woman wanted by police over kissing BTS member without consent
A Japanese woman accused of kissing a member of the K-pop boy band BTS without consent is wanted for questioning by the South Korean police.
The incident took place in Seoul on 13 June last year when Jin held a free meet and greet event, where he hugged 1,000 fans who had won a raffle, after completing his mandatory 18-month military service.
The woman reportedly kissed Jin on the cheek when he leaned in to hug her.
The musician looked visibly startled and turned his face away. “My lips touched his neck. His skin was so soft,” the woman later wrote in a blog post according to the South Korean state news agency Yonhap.
The Songpa police station in Seoul said the Japanese woman, who is in her 50s, has been booked and summoned on charges of sexual harassment in a public space.
A BTS fan had filed a criminal complaint against her which led to an investigation.
Police have refused to disclose the woman’s identity, citing privacy, and have not provided many details about the matter since the investigation is underway.
Media reports said that South Korean police were able to confirm the identity of the woman with the help of Japanese police, adding that she was refusing to appear for questioning.
Police are also reportedly considering calling in Jin, whose real name is Kim Seok Jin, to provide a statement.
BTS, made up of members RM, Jin, Suga, j-hope, Jimin, V, and Jung Kook, announced in 2022 they would be taking a break from group activities to focus on solo music, while each member completed their military service. During this period, all the members released their solo albums, with Suga additionally going on tour under his alter ego Agust D.
Jin had previously released a single, “The Astronaut”, co-written with Coldplay, in October 2022, and released an extended version of his 2021 single “Super Tuna,” which he performed at the band’s 11th debut anniversary in June 2024. In November the same year, he released his mini album Happy, which peaked at number 4 on the Billboard 200.
Additionally, j-hope announced his first solo tour and teased new music set to release in March.
Titled Hope on the Stage, the tour will start in February and take in major cities across North America and Asia.
Jin was discharged from the military in June 2024 and j-hope in October.
The remaining members are expected to complete their military service by the end of 2025, with Jung Kook and Jimin scheduled to return in June that year. They are anticipated to resume activities as a septet in 2026.
Kim Jong Un oversees test launch of strategic cruise missiles
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw the test launch of strategic cruise missiles on Wednesday amid escalating tensions in the region.
The test was designed to warn “enemies, who are seriously violating the security environment of the (country) and fostering and escalating the confrontation environment” and to demonstrate “readiness of its various nuke operation means,” the official Korean Central News Agency reported.
Mr Kim hailed the new strategic missiles for bolstering the country’s “nuclear shield” as a senior delegation met Russian president Vladimir Putin.
The missiles traveled 1,587km in an oval trajectory, taking between 7,961 and 7,973 seconds to reach their targets, it said, in what was the fourth missile launch event this year and the second of president Donald Trump‘s second term.
“It is the responsible mission and duty of the DPRK’s nuclear armed forces to permanently defend the national sovereignty and security with the reliable nuclear shield,” Mr Kim said, referring to the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
North Korea did not confirm how many missiles were tested but South Korea’s military said it tracked several cruise missiles after they were launched at around 8am (2300 GMT Tuesday) over the sea.
On Thursday Mr Kim sent a delegation of top officials to Moscow to meet Mr Putin, reinforcing the deepening military and strategic alliance between North Korea and Russia. This relationship has already raised concerns, as reports suggest Pyongyang is supplying Russia with ammunition,
Mr Putin met and held talks with the delegation led by Ri Hi Yong, a secretary of the central committee of the North’s ruling Worker’s Party of Korea.
Photos showed top Russian officials, Mr Putin’s aid Yuri Ushakov, joining the talks at the round table discussion.
On the same day, South Korea’s spy agency said that North Korea sent additional troops to Russia, after its soldiers deployed on the Russian-Ukraine fronts suffered heavy casualties.
The National Intelligence Service (NIS) said in a brief statement it was trying to determine exactly how many more troops had been provided in the latest round of deployment.
The NIS also assessed that North Korean troops were redeployed at fronts in Russia’s Kursk region in the first week of February, following a reported temporary withdrawal from the area.
How North Korea pulled off the biggest heist in history
Just after 2pm last Friday, a notorious group of hackers – responsible for some of the worst cybercrimes of the 21st century – pulled off what may well be their magnum opus.
In the space of just a few minutes, approximately $1.46bn (£1.16bn) worth of digital currency was stolen from Bybit, one of the world’s most popular crypto exchanges, and funnelled across the internet to anonymous wallets. It marked the biggest heist in history.
For comparison, the amount stolen was nearly 30 times greater than the £53m taken during the 2006 Securitas depot robbery in Tonbridge, the UK’s largest ever cash heist. It was also nearly $500m larger than the amount Saddam Hussein stole from the Iraqi Central Bank on the eve of the 2003 Iraq war in an act that is commonly listed as the largest theft of all time.
Details of the operation are still emerging, but what is unique to crypto exchange breaches is that funds can be tracked in real time over the blockchain. Serving as an online ledger, blockchain technology provides for the transparency of every transaction and movement of funds between wallet addresses, even if the owner of an individual wallet is unknown.
This has allowed investigators to follow the stolen assets in real time as the hackers attempt to launder them through various wallets and exchanges, with the pattern closely mirroring a technique used by one of the world’s most sophisticated hacking operations: the Lazarus Group.
Allegedly backed by North Korea since its inception in 2009, the group has previously caused worldwide chaos through the 2017 WannaCry ransomware attacks, which infected 200,000 computers across 150 countries, including the system used by the NHS.
The Lazarus Group has also carried out numerous cryptocurrency attacks in the past, though Friday’s haul represents the largest strike to date, with the hackers making away with the equivalent of North Korea’s annual defence budget ($1.47bn in 2023).
Crypto investigation firm Chainalysis noted that the Bybit hack followed a common playbook used by Lazarus, which involves a social engineering attack to initially compromise the funds. It occurred during a routine transfer from Bybit’s Ethereum cold wallet – an offline crypto storage device – to its online hot wallet.
By targeting those responsible for verifying the wallet addresses with personalised phishing attacks, the hackers tricked them into signing off the transactions to wallets owned by Lazarus.
“A security system is only as strong as its weakest link. In Bybit’s case, there was a security loophole when Ledger [a hardware wallet] and Safe[Wallet] [a digital wallet app] were used together,” Shahar Madar, vice-president of security and trust at blockchain platform Fireblocks, told The Independent.
“Hackers likely used malware to secretly modify what users saw on the Safe[Wallet] interface. Users thought they were approving a normal transaction, when in reality they were approving a different, manipulated one. Ledger required users to approve transactions without showing full details (known as “blind signing”). This meant users couldn’t see what they were actually approving, making it easy for hackers to trick them.”
Within two hours of the Bybit theft, researchers from blockchain analytics firm Elliptic observed stolen funds being sent to 50 different wallets, each holding approximately 10,000 ETH (Ethereum).
These wallets were then systematically emptied through decentralised exchanges in a laundering process known as “layering”, which attempts to conceal the transaction trail.
“North Korea’s Lazarus Group is the most sophisticated and well-resourced launderer of cryptoassets in existence, continually adapting its techniques to evade identification and seizure of stolen assets,” Elliptic noted in a blog post. “The transparency of blockchains means that this transaction trail can be followed, but these layering tactics can complicate the tracing process, buying the launderers valuable time to cash-out the assets.“
Working alongside Bybit, Elliptic claims it has already seized some of the funds stolen from the Dubai-based exchange, but says the biggest challenge is the sheer volume of stolen assets.
Crypto intelligence platform Arkham noted that the Bybit hackers were making multiple transactions every minute for 45 minutes, before pausing for 15 minutes. The pattern seemed to suggest that the process was not automated, as whoever was doing it needed to take periodic breaks.
“Did Lazarus get an intern to wash their funds manually,” the firm asked in a post on X (Twitter).
The massive heist caused crypto markets to tumble, but it also served as an inadvertent demonstration of the industry’s resilience. Within 72 hours of the attack, Bybit had restored its reserve to a 1:1 ratio, meaning no customer funds were lost.
“Through it all, the crypto community, our partners, and our users have shown unwavering support,” the exchange said in a statement. “We know where our funds have gone, and we’re committed to turning this experience into an opportunity to strengthen the ecosystem … Today marks a new week and a new chapter.”
The scale of the attack could ultimately fuel broader efforts to take down Lazarus. In response to the hack, Ben Zhou, the CEO of Bybit – which is the world’s second-largest crypto exchange by trading volume – called for a “war against Lazarus”, announcing a $140m bounty for whoever could recover the funds and provide information about the group.
The move, which is an industry first, could mark the beginning of coordinated global action to finally neutralise the Lazarus Group’s cyberterror campaigns.
“We have shared in a dark moment of crypto history, and we’ve proven we are better than the malicious actors,” said Mr Zhou. “We will not stop until Lazarus or bad actors in the industry are eliminated.”
This café has been named the world’s best coffee shop for 2025
A cafe in Australia’s Sydney has been ranked as the world’s best coffee shop, with those in the US, Austria, Norway, and Singapore following close behind.
According to the World’s 100 Best Coffee spots announced at the Madrid Coffee Festival in Spain, Toby’s Estate Coffee Roasters in Sydney landed at the top, beating constant rival Melbourne, which found itself in the fourth spot with Proud Mary Coffee. Founded in 1997, the specialty coffee brand is known for its high-quality beans and focus on ethical sourcing.
“Not every day you get to say you’re #1 in the world at something, but here we are – Toby’s Estate has officially taken the crown!” the brand wrote on Instagram.
“We’re beyond stoked to top the list – and to represent Australia alongside some of the best cafés in the game…We designed the space to break down barriers – literally – with an island brew bar and overhead mirrors, so you can get up close, chat with the team, and watch the magic unfold.”
In second spot is Onyx Coffee Lab, which has several locations across Arkansas in the US. Closing out the top three is Gota Coffee Experts in Austria’s Vienna, known not only for its coffee, but also its interactive coffee workshops.
The list is created after careful consideration of the quality of the coffee and food, customer service, cafe ambience, sustainable policies, barista experience, and overall consistency and innovation. Public opinion and expert evaluations were both included in the final ranking.
In the top 10 are also cafes from Singapore, France, Malaysia, and Colombia.
With a total of nine Australian cafes on the list, it’s safe to say the country is doing something right with their coffee, even if they can’t agree on whether Melbourne or Sydney does it better.
Coffee first became popular in Australia in the 1880s after the emergence of the Temperance Movement in Melbourne, which lobbied against alcohol, claiming it led to antisocial behaviour. This, along with the rise of chic Parisian cafes, led to the creation of coffee palaces, to give people a place to meet and socialise over food and a drink.
Melbourne saw the biggest growth, with lavish multi-storey coffee palaces that offered an alternative to pubs. Elegant and grand, the coffee palaces served as vibrant social hubs for Australian society, with their popularity swiftly reaching cities like Sydney.
Espresso arrived in the 1930s with Italian immigrants, but it truly found a home in the 1950s, when post-World War II European immigrants brought the continent’s cafe culture with them.
Over the years, Australia has developed its own culture and in fact, created its own version. Alan Preston, of the Moors Espresso Bar in Sydney, claims he was the first to coin the term “flat white” in 1985, drawing inspiration from a type of espresso popular in Queensland in the ‘60s and ‘70s, described as the “white coffee – flat”.
However, New Zealand’s Frank McInnes, contests the claim, and says he accidentally invented the flat white when the milk needed for a frothy cappuccino refused to rise. “Sorry,” he said, “it’s a flat white”.
“I think our win is a win for the country. Australian coffee is, I think, the best in the world and so it doesn’t come down to Sydney and Melbourne,” Jody Leslie, general manager for Toby’s Estate, told CNN Travel. “We want to be strong as a country, and that helps everyone.”